Poll: Few voters report seeing bigger paychecks after tax changes

Most voters aren’t noticing more money in their paychecks under the new tax law, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

Just a quarter of registered voters, 25 percent, say they have noticed an increase in their paycheck, the poll shows. A majority, 51 percent, say they have not.

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Among employed voters — those working in the private and public sectors, plus those who are self-employed — a larger percentage, 37 percent, have noticed an uptick on their pay stubs. But 53 percent say they haven’t.

Self-identified Republicans are more likely to say they have seen a larger paycheck under the new law (32 percent) than Democrats (21 percent) or independents (22 percent).

Opponents have attacked the new tax law as primarily benefiting the wealthy and corporations, and there is some evidence in the new poll that higher-income voters are seeing more benefits in the early days of the law’s enactment.

“Our polling shows high-income earners are more likely to have noticed an increase in their paychecks as a result of the tax bill," said Kyle Dropp, Morning Consult’s co-founder and chief research officer. “For example, 40 percent of voters who earn more than $100,000 said they have noticed a pay increase in the past several weeks. In contrast, 33 percent of voters who earn between $50,000 and $100,000 and 16 percent of voters who earn under $50,000 said the same.”

While other public surveys suggest the tax law is getting more popular over time, the POLITICO/Morning Consult poll support is stagnant, though still exceeding opposition. In the new poll, 45 percent of voters support the law enacted late last year, and 35 percent oppose it. The remaining 19 percent are undecided or have no opinion.

That is identical to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll last month that also showed support at 45 percent and opposition at 35 percent. (There were slight differences in question wording: Last month’s poll asked about “widespread changes to the tax system recently passed by Congress,” while this month’s poll asked about “widespread changes to the tax system recently signed into law by President [Donald] Trump.”)

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The poll also shows a slight downtick in Trump’s approval rating, one week after it equaled the percentage who disapproved of his job performance for the first time since last April. In the new poll, 45 percent of voters approve of the job Trump is doing as president, down slightly from 47 percent last week. The percentage of voters who disapprove increased more substantially, to 51 percent in the new survey from 47 percent last week.